


Come, is there not a cup of ale for the King?

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: Man with a Sword - Henry Treece, TREECE Henry - Works
Genre: Be The First 2017, Drabble Sequence, English History, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-11
Packaged: 2018-10-13 16:11:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10517250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: Five drabbles: old men talking.





	

**Introduction**

“You cantankerous bastard!” William bellows, mired to the top of his greaves.

Hereward leans on his saddle. The mare is his own stock, broad-hoofed and solid, greying alongside her master. “Why talk to a fool like me, when you have a palace full of barons saying yes to every word?”

“And not one of them will tell me the truth.” William pulls one foot free from the sucking mud. “Although you promised an afternoon’s fishing, my English friend, and you find me this – swamp.”

Hereward says, “Having a Viking for a grandfather always leaves a man weak in the head.”

 

**Victory**

“So who else was there? The Atheling?” William snorts. “That puling milksop. Edwin? Morcar? They are Denmark’s vassals in all but name. And for all you swore your sword to his banner, you were not over-fond of Swein.” 

“A man does not fight for his king,” Hereward says. 

“Nor does he fight for that quiet farm and the dog outside of it,” William snaps. 

Hereward upends the ale flask. “A man fights for his pride,” he says. “For a handful of figs. For a crown. What does it matter? You won this battle, my friend.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” says William. 

 

**Immigration**

“I told you not to go around the countryside promising everyone you meet a parcel of land!” Hereward mutters.

“When I promised you that by God’s Grace there should be peace between us I did not bargain for a carping soothsayer!” 

“It did not take a fool to realise that every Norman who raised a sword for you expected his due,” Hereward says. “And every dispossessed English thegn became your foe.”

“How else should I have rewarded them?” William says. “Gold? The exchequer was empty. Women? In nunneries, or sewing with my wife. There was nothing else.”

Hereward is silent.

 

**Economy**

“With the church, the taking away can be as important as the giving,” Hereward says, still bitter. 

“I cannot threaten every monastery with lost farmland,” William says. “My wife objects.”

It had been years, since the monks had betrayed him at Ely, landless and starving, and the bones of a plump goose litter their trenchers. Hereward snaps the wishbone. “But what is the sense in such accounting? So many geese, so many sheep...as well try and count the stars!”

“Gold,” William says.

“Words do not put gold in my pocket.” Hereward snorts. “Writing is for churchmen.”

“You’ll see,” William says.

 

**Religion**

“I was anointed by God to rule this country,” William says. “And, by God, I will rule it.”

“What does it matter whose name you swear by, if the oath itself is untrue?”

“That is between me and God,” William says. 

“I have heard the choir-boys sing in the palace of the Emperor at Miklagard, and seen men cry out to the Thunderer at the moment of their death, and I will tell you both these things are of God,” Hereward says. “A man’s word should be truth.”

“And you apostate.” 

“That too is between me and God,” Hereward says.

**Author's Note:**

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> _“A while later the two warriors were well away from affairs of state. They were trying to recall the songs that had been sung over Europe when they were boys. Suddenly they remembered the Iam, Dulcis Amica, the love-song they had whistled twenty years before among the reeds on Axholme the night they fished together.”_
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> Henry Treece suggests that in their later years, the English rebel Hereward the Wake and his enemy William I, William the Conquerer, became friends. This is surmise, although one source for Hereward's death does claim he lived out his last years peaceably. For anyone not in possession of the book (or of Victor Head's useful _Hereward_ ), both Hereward and William are of Viking descent. Hereward was reportedly excommunicated for sacking Peterborough Cathedral, the "Golden Borough", whilst fighting for Swein, the King of Denmark. William at his coronation swore to uphold the law, although the law he upheld included the Continental version of the feudal system and not the English version, while consequent settlement and legislation disadvantaged the English.
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> This one pretty much comes under books and authors I grew up with and loved.


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